Deceptive Calmness Before Severe Weather

Bands of beautifully patterned altocumulus clouds dominate the eastern sky over Interstate 80 as seen from the Minden, Iowa exit (Exit 29) around 4:15 PM, Saturday, April 9, 2011. Though very windy the sun was out and there was no real visual evidence that severe weather was only about an hour and a half away. Very warm temperatures (81 degrees) and high dew points (73 degrees) with strong wind shear and lift made for a volatile mix of air. This shot was made from the old parking lot of a former convenience store and gas station, long removed, just north of the Minden exit, about 23 miles northeast of Council Bluffs. It was our chase team's waiting point of about an hour to see where storms would begin to fire up--which they did around 5:15 PM just northwest of Omaha, Nebraska--then began moving into western Iowa as they matured. The storm system would produce many tornadoes in western Iowa, most of them after dark. (Following the April 9 severe weather outbreak--produced from unusually WARM and unstable air for this location and time of year--the state of Iowa would experience almost a month's worth of unseasonably COOL weather, which included three frost nights from May 1-3.)